Sessions at From The Front - Back to the Front with slides

Thursday 29th September 2011

Javascript & browsers have been for years a complex and unsafe environment for a web developer, now we have the right tools to gain control on what we are distributing in our web applications. During the workshop you will learn first-hand basic Javascript Test Driven Development practices including testing, refactoring and related agile practices such as continuous integration and pair programming.
Program: an introduction to test driven development & continuous integration in js development; tests basics (unit vs functional and what’s worth testing in clientside development, mocking & stubbing, managing dependencies); development of a modular event driven application.
Requirements a medium knowledge of native javascript interface (you have to be able to write your own code).

Unscheduled

By now most of you know how to use the popular new CSS3 features in your stylesheets, to embed custom fonts and easily create rounded corners, drop shadows, and scalable designs with media queries. However, below the surface, there are many other things that CSS3 brings and most web developers have never heard of. In this talk Lea will present many CSS3 features that are useful but underrated, as well as uncommon ways of utilizing the CSS3 features you already know about, in order to do much more with even less images and code.

The range of devices accessing the web is increasing. We are faced with a choice in how we deal with this diversity. We can either fracture the web by designing a multitude of device-specific silos, or we can embrace the flexibility of the web and create experiences that can adapt to any device or browser.

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Symfony2 is blazing fast. Yet execution time in the backend is not all there is to the speed of an application. In the first part of this session, we’ll look at the basic enhancements we can make to get an applications that truly feels snappy. In the second part of the session we’ll look at JavaScript optimizations in greater detail.

Complex applications need a persistent database to store, search and join data: till now a dedicated server was needed to do this, and no offline usage of the app was possible. With the introduction of HTML5 and the concept of Web Databases, we don't need an external server anymore: everything is stored within the user browser and thus the web app can be used offline as well as online.